Imagine a situation:
You are surrounded by deadly aoe, standing on an only safe spot.
As a thief, you just used your damage skill, that left you with 0 initiative.
As a warrior, you just used your damage skill, and it went on cooldown.
Suddenly, an enemy appears charging melee skill that seems to be very painful attack.
Now what can a (not godly insightful superskill) thief do?
1) wait 4-5 seconds for initiative to recharge to use blind/cc. You’ll die before.
2) dodge. and die in aoe.
3) dodge and dodge back. you might have regened 4 initiative to blind next one-shot. MAYBE. and you can’t dodge anymore
4) dodge out and use an ability to port yourself back. No guarantee that you will actually avoid damage this way. Or that you will be ported right back on safe spot.
5) use an op utility. Wait, what? Theoretically you can use: Smoke wall, signet of shadows, shadowstep(if you are lucky with terrain). Sure as hell you won’t be carrying smoke wall for this. Just as well you would not consider wasting a stun breaker if you are not sure it will surely save you. Well, SoS is still an option. If you waste a slot for running it in combat.
Now, what can a warrior do?
1) Use one of 7 other skills. That, unlike thief skills, may include block or some other invulnerability, reliable CC or just enough damage to finish threat off right away.
2) If for some reason 1) was not favored, there is 3 utility slots where warrior can have anything ranging from CC to invulnerability.
3) forget it. I have 2x base hp and 1.5-2x base armor. I’ll take it like a man.
(edited by Ichishi.9613)
I am just trying to point out that one skill in 4-5 seconds is NOT > 8 skills in 30 seconds
If we assume that all skills have 30 sec cooldown (and most of them have lower cd) you still can blow 8 skills every 30 seconds on cooldown class.
In the same 30 seconds thief would regenerate 30 initiative. That is 10 heartseekers. Or 7.5 DB. Or 6 unloads/pistol whips. Or 5 CnD’s. Notice, you can only spam heartseekers more than other classes can use skills in this case. Oh wait, now add cooldown reduction to cooldown skills.
And try again.
Except the rollback note on Flanking Strikes and consideration over the amount the vigor duration will be reduced to no answers were given that we did not know already.
Unless we consider rather debatable claims a valid answers. Like massive buffs, abusing the most abusable stomping mechanic and comparing initiative with cooldowns.
So this is getting closed today without a single answer given?
I would suggest to hold back the thief balancing till they have something more viable and only implement the infusion of shadow change
I agree with this, i’d rather have only the infusion fix than any of the proposed changes, especially if it means the balance team will take their time to actually familiarize themselves with the class and thus produce a quality update at a later date.
I will vote for this.
And what is the point of comparing how many skills warrior and thief can use in a given time frame if we do not consider the usefulness of those skills?
Jon, we are pointing out the flaws in solutions that are proposed to the sword’s skill number 2 and opportunity/initiative in general. We are not in any ways denying the existence of the problems and existence of reasons behind every change.
It is just that none of the given reasons justifies exactly the changes that are proposed. Instead of providing a 1) measurable goal; 2) instruments by which we can judge the success of solution; 3) a prognosis of impact of the solution; we are being given the plain reasons over and over again. The ones we were all aware of before this topic started.
Reasons that are being pointed out only speak of the NEED OF SOLUTION. None of them requires the exact very solutions that are proposed.
(edited by Ichishi.9613)
It is getting rightfully nerfed. But not because it is op in pvp combat (where it is not op) but due to the sole fact of being able to stay away from combat for extended periods of time.
A stealth-built D/P is not going to kill any decent player. Harass – maybe. Achieve something – no way.
The 4.75 from current opportunist is the bottom line when attacking SINGLE target.
The 2 from new opportunist is the attainable maximum in any conditions.
I am pretty confident that with a simple request ANET could get a well formed, immense and organized priority list with all kinds of details from a community in several days. On every topic in existence.
Let’s break down this thief change a bit more so we can dispel any notions that this is going to ruin thieves.
For sPvP, you’re probably ruining thieves with the Shadow Return nerf. Mainhand dagger doesn’t matter in the tank meta, and sword is losing all the tools it needed to not die in a fight. That isn’t saying that this isn’t going to be for the best in the long run, but the class is probably going to be trash tier for several months until you figure out how to make it work.
The initiative changes are pretty blah. Opportunist is a group PvE powerhouse on a generally weak PvE class, but it’s a pretty forgettable trait in PvP; the change you’re making is going to sledgehammer it in PvE and not have much of an effect on PvP. Honestly I’m more annoyed that it continues the trend of poor proc design than any power level concerns (precision is a sub-par stat in your game because you balanced it around procs, then sledgehammered all the procs) and it’s a step backward in fixing that problem in the long run. Cutting the proc chance in half would be a whole lot healthier than this proposal, for what it’s worth.
Most of the other traits hits you decided on feel bad simply because there isn’t a whole lot you can do about them; you’ll still end up taking the traits and feel bad about it. It’s not like I’m going to stop putting 30 points into Critical Strikes because you nerfed Opportunist; it wasn’t a big part of a PvP spec anyway, and the alternative is not being able to kill things. Ripping a bunch of power off of Quick Recovery doesn’t encourage me to experiment with different traits in an Acrobatics build, because nothing else in the line does anything – you’ll just suck it up and run bad Quick Recovery. Kleptomaniac was a nice bonus for investing 30 points into Trickery, now it’s basically garbage unless you put 30 points into Trickery.
…and so forth. Again, it’s not a disagreement with the design direction. I agree with the design intent 100%. It’s more that these changes look, well, like a first pass alpha draft, and I’d hope to see significant refinement of these concepts before they’re pushed to live.
What he said. Was there ever a round table where all the solutions were listed and considered in orderly and constructive manner? If you don’t have enough time I am pretty sure you would at least have some to read a bit of the work that community can do FOR you and BETTER than you. Simply because there is more of us
25/30/10/0/5
Unbeatable single target D/D dps. If you have nerves, eyes and fingers of steel.
So it comes down to promoting defensive/passive play again?
If before you used IR to get away from certain death, now you use it to remove conditions and get out of combat? And wait for ini to passively regen with the new, boosted regen?
Same thing with opportunist.
You got more initiative by attacking more, and now it will come to getting more initiative while not attacking?
You are forgetting to compare the other parts.
Like how long it would take a thief to do a damage that would be equal to a warrior blowing his all cooldowns in a row.
Believe me, that time is much greater than the cooldown on the warrior’s skills.
And, in example above, I taken into consideration 1 sec icd on current opportunist as well as THE MOST pessimistic scenario on 30% proc. I could probably account on the delay of the proc but that is way below of 5% error margin. Like I said, I am interested only in answer to “was P/P and S/P considered in this change and how?” I not that much against the change itself.
(edited by Ichishi.9613)
But inability to avoid the damaging followup of the stun? If I am using a stun breaker that WOULD let me avoid the damaging followup, what is the reason for infiltrators return to exist at this point? If now I would need to blow an utility anyway regardless of what spec, weapon set and situation I am in. For example, a venom share thief can run exclusively S/P, in some cases S/D effectively. Solely because it is the sword that provides it with the otherwise non-existent survive ability.
Me quoted there.
I want to point out again that I am not as much against changes as much I am against comments that came with them.
I am currently working on my feedback on the whole thief trait line selections. So to say, I am really afraid of what for now seems like a rather random changes (the solutions that look like there was no options to debate on at all and that thus made it in as the only ones).
Stealth, no matter how much even I like or hate it, does not effectively contribute to any objective available in pvp currently.
Practically, an utility mechanic that is taken overly seriously resulting the class being burdened with it rather that one utilizing it.
There is not a single main-scenario case in pvp where stealth contributes to the achieving a certain goal.
Thief is stripped of all other defenses and as such is forced into stealth. Once he starts using stealth to full extent, he is rightfully called stealth abuser. Which results in thief itself, no the stupid useless utility – stealth – being nerfed over and over and over.
If this continues, there will become time where thieves will remain with nothing but stealth in their kitten nal.
Assassins were epic in Guild Wars. Without a single hint of stealth mechanics, with mobility that would make gw2 thieves cry, with damage that was obviously meant to kill.
Here, thief is a ripoff “stealth class” of other mmo’s. With an exception that instead of letting some of the pride go and taking some readily available and working stealth mechanics, one was created from scratch to doom the class and whole game.
well that is the worst thing they could do. Proving to a thief community that they have no clue about how the thieves work.
We get 1 more initiative per 4 seconds. We get 1 more 4-ini skill per 16 seconds. Technically, the we get cooldown time reduced by 25% on ONE skill.
Other classes get 15%/20%/35%/40% cooldown time reduced on 2/3/4/8/11 skills.
How a thief one is superior in any way I fail to notice.
I am talking mostly about pve. You’d be stupid running P/P in competitive pvp.
And no, I do not think that a BASE increase to passive initiative regen is a way to go.
Risk/reward, remember? Yes, its a buff, but its a stupid snowballing power creep buff that does not solve ANY issues or ANY changes to initiative traits.
cesmode, yes it is a minor change for the worse for P/P. But we don’t want it to happen because 1) they gave lamest excuse for it 2) that would allow them to make any other changes without taking anything else in consideration also
Because of all the classes in GW2 it comes with the least amount of things I hate and the most amount of things I like from GW1.
You have 15 base, 45 regen and a TON of opportunities (literally, not just trait name)
After patch – you have 15 base and 72 regen. Nothing more, nothing less. No room for error, and no room for brain.Pre patch the max init regen (using Opportunity and base regen) is 105. The highest post patch will be 72 as you stated. That seems like a big difference but virtually no build is going to be able to spam 3.3 critical shots every second of that minute. Only a very small handful of skills can guarantee a ROI of 1 init per second from Opportunity. The skills that can do that cost too much to spam endlessly.
IMO, most builds that use Opp to regen were probably hitting in the 70s on this scale. Some builds will probably take a hit during bursts but will likely even out over the attack chains. Every other build is likely to see a small to very large improvement in overall DPS.
As I pointed out in other posts as well as Jon from Anet, Opportunity is a mid-tier minor trait that should not define builds. If it is a trait that defines builds it should be a Grand Master trait that requires sacrifice to get. They gave us a giant buff and likely a mostly minor nerf. Opp regen builds (S/P and P/P) didn’t really get anything out of it but I am so sure they lost much either.
You are misunderstanding. Opportunist does not define S/P or P/P nor is required by them. Just as well as opportunist does not define or is required by any other build. It is just the sole fact that out of all builds, both overpowered and underplayed, mediocre-to-good build were buffed by the change while weak builds were hit by it negatively.
Just as well the P/P and S/P are not hit HARD with this change it is just the sole fact that this change was brought in as a MASSIVE BUFF to any and all thieves.
But the change to opportunist did not include the compensation for those builds that actually actively, willingly, skillfully used it.
Thief gets more BASELINE power at the cost of lowering the skill ceiling and abandoning benefits that reaching that ceiling could give.
Look. D/D will make more CnD or more DB with this change.
S/D will make more stips with this change.
Godly SB doesn’t really care.
D/P will make more Heartseekers with this change.
P/P will make less Unloads.
S/P will make less Pistol Whips.
Does not sound like a buff for everyone.
I already did my calculations (because, for some reason, offensive skill cap is nearly non-existant in this game) and already proved that in this exactly way as it way now posted, this change barely evens out on P/P IF:
1) Pure single target dps
2) No additional combat modifiers (like quickness/burst phases/invuln stacks)
3) Not a perfect understanding and acting for the specific encounter
If any of those are not present current Opportunist beats the new one. Just plainly.
I do not demand the cardinal change or any action in particular taken in terms of the change’s functionality. I want a sincere answer to the questions “were those particular builds considered in making this change?” and “to what extent, in what conditions, with which numbers they were considered?”
If ANET says it a buff I want to be able to believe it is.
If ANET says this change was needed I want to be able to believe there was a big number of suggestions and each of them was considered in at least most applicable situations, and the best one was chosen.
If ANET takes part in constructive discussion I want them to show at least believable amount of awareness and expertise on subject, so that replies would not look like excuses.
Look at this.
1) Infiltrate to the downed enemy
2) Throw a Shadow Refuge onto point you infiltrated from
3) Start channeling stomp
4) Steal if off cd, use it on a necro nearby.
5) Oh, what this a engi throwing a stability pot to secure a stomp for himself? Shadowstep under it.
6) Apparently stealing that necro applied some conditions to us. Shadow return to get rid of them.
7) 1 second has passed, people probably got bored swinging at your shadow refuge. Infiltrate back into refuge.
8) Signet to the target at the end of channel.
9) launch a fear stolen from necro. They should all flee in terror of your mobility and overpowered stomp securing skills. Since they tried to ress the target, they all get the longest fear from steal.
I really disagree on that, becuse p/p has allways been USELESS and broken.
Erm. No.
Its probably on par with every non-warrior zerker setup. I’m able to string together 3 or 4 unloads for about 7-9k each, sometimes 10 or 11k if I have full might stacks. Id say thats not too shabby.Yeah except it’s not just about how much burst damage it’s capable of. The set is fundamentally broken because it relies too much on both Initiative starvation and the ability to stand still to do even mediocre sustained DPS.
This is a problem that will remain in place until Vital Shot gets a substantial buff.
Last I checked, I can move while unloading. So while I am unloading x 3, I am constantly moving, not standing still.
I do agree, that the spec is fundamentally boring, but not broken. All you do is unload spam, thats it. A buff to something like Vital shot would be a nice wrench into the mix.
By movement, dodge was meant. With unload, you cannot brainlessly damage, dodge, damage. Its a channel ability that takes its full cost at start of channel.
By reducing this trait and improving base regen we are giving non-crit thieves 15-30 trait points back to spend where they want to.
There is nothing else to take for a damage thief. Even more so if this patch hits live.
I don’t have a problem with my own play.
I do have a problem with getting into groups that I could effectively do dungeons with.
Most of my both coe and arah runs are with new or casual people that i need to explain every single thing to, change my play just to compensate for what they lack, sometimes even to explain how to play classes I never did.
While 4 warr/1 mesmer groups form and fill in an instant and burn through dungeons in a single breath.
Massive buffs. Massive new content. Massive fixes. Only gem shop gets very little attention.
We are not worrying about initiative on S/D or D/D in general, we are not worrying about builds that BUILD AROUND the ridiculous initiative regeneration (and those are getting rightfully hit with nerfbat). We worry about builds for which current situation is the one that promotes more skillful play with higher gains, unlike the proposed ones that eliminates the difference between “do more = get more” and “do less or more = do not get less or more”
Well for me, even with my rather wide selection of people that know me, I have very big troubles with running CoE and Arah on a regular basis as a thief.
Very often I find myself soloing all of the dungeon’s soloable content and then trying to find people to just finish what I can’t alone.
Its not just people that don’t want thieves to join their party, but also people that refuse to join if party has one. Which often escalates to thief (being inferior) kicked in favor of a warrior or guardian.
Thief is also very likely to be one to be replaced when party is facing a wall, even if thief performs outstandingly.
(edited by Ichishi.9613)
Could you point out that community (apart from very rare indviduals that were already ridiculed) that is defending perma stealth?
You should not judge the community by what it thinks, says, demonstrates or proposes. You should judge it by HOW community does it.
except that you are by far less likely to get a non-guild group as anything other than zerk warrior or, in much rarer cases, guardian or mesmer (just for the quickness)
I want to be a main P/P thief. And P/P thief needs everything he has to be comparable to other builds and classes.
And the incoming changes sure as hell do not buff our damage in any way at all. The opposite is still debatable, but already quite obvious.
Response is great.
But the details they go into are, like pointed out, silly.
Every change has a goal.
Every goal must be specific, measurable and reachable.
They do well at pointing out the problems (though pointing out too few of them and ignoring much bigger ones).
They do well at explaining the reasons for each and every change (but they don’t give the reason itself, don’t show us the goal, the numbers).
They handle critique well (but at this point fail to remain constructive).
I guess I am just being greedy, but I would suppose that if you finally go out to the community, you’d better go all the way to be objective and (slightly overused words, hope that’s how those are in English) “politically correct”.
I mean, if you are here to deliver a message – deliver it, gather response and deliver it back.
If you are here to discuss things, show some understanding and/or agreeable knowledge on the subject.
Yes, attention to bugs over, em, “balancing”, would be appreciated.
I won’t mention the hell engi’s are in, but I am sure that good chunk of thieves are not only aware of thief bugs but can also list them in one go in the middle of the sleep since they have to deal them over and over since the very first beta weekend.
Why is that community that already possesses much more in-game knowledge than developers themselves, is being either ignored completely or lured into silly “balance” discussions.
I cried when Jon said the mentioned changes are “masssssssssssive buff to all thieves”. And unreasonable promoting of unreasonable and random traits which still will suffer from the same bugs that were pointed out to Anet one and a half year ago without ever being even addressed, much less fixed.
I do love the fact we at least have a person to speak to now. But so far only one side is being constructive in the discussions.
Problem is that the change to initiative does not equally balance out opportunity for (as stupid as it sounds) the WEAKEST build that rely on it the most.
Lets drop opportunity completely. Count HOW MUCH EACH AND EVERY SKILL benefited from it. And balance accordingly.
And not “Price of fuel increased by 50%. To compensate, town speed limit is increased by 10.”
Im okay with the nerf in opportunist, the problem is they are not giving us anything in return for the loss of initiative. the buff to ini regen is not enough to cover the huge loss
Yeah… think you are wrong on that. In 60 seconds a thief will regen 15 more initiative with the new system. I don’t know how many Unload/Pistol Whips with Opportunity can be done in that time but it would have to be north of 30 before it beats out the new system. It would need to be over 40 before it is a sizable loss.
Most players just got a big buff since the current Opportunity alone cannot regen 40% more initiative (about what the new system will regen with the new Opportunity) on most builds.
12 unloads (60 second of initiative regen +15 base) alone regen anywhere between 12-24 initiative, 16-17 on average. These 3 more unloads, recursively, generate even more initiative. For that regened initiative, you can make one more unload that will regen initiative.
You have 15 base, 45 regen and a TON of opportunities (literally, not just trait name)
After patch – you have 15 base and 72 regen. Nothing more, nothing less. No room for error, and no room for brain.
No. Calculations were given.
The balance patch is a buff to P/P WHEN P/P is NOT doing damage (aka not unloading). Get more initiative while doing nothing. Makes sense, huh.
Point is that new opportunist does not care whether you are auto attacking (try to not proc it with 50% chance in 5 seconds) or actively unloading in the middle of your best damage phase (you still get 1 initiative per 5 seconds, no matter what you do).
If you love spamming 1 a lot, run around without attacking and dodging around without need, then yes, this is a buff.
But P/P is (hopefully) about doing damage.
This change brings a genuine P/P thief, that is aware of its surroundings, knows were to stand and how to maximize his damage and time on target to the level of a just a P/P.
Promoting skillful play.
You should understand that for them it is much easier to change numeric values in skills and traits rather than change something in skill mechanics.
Also there is not a single trait that modifies certain skill’s existing behavior so I could take I guess that this is either impossible or too hard.
Welcome to Guild Warriors 2
Jon, let me rephrase my question:
In what way, do you think, pve P/P and S/P (the most inferior both damage and defense-wise) will benefit “massive buff” with initiative gain cut by 30% (opportunist, the +0.25 per second counted in already) and vigor cut by half?
But they forgot that thieves have different weapons and uses for initiative.
But take a look at pistol whip and unload. PLEASE
This trait is that very thing that allows P/P and S/P to actually do damage.
“all thief specs got massive buffs”. Yea, I guess a level 1 thief is now 25% stronger with any weapon.
Sword auto hits 3 targets. Pistol whip hits 3 targets 7 times plus initial strike.
Pistol shot with auto ricochet hits up to four targets. Unload with ricochet hits up to 15 targets.
Considering 100% crit rate on pistol whip/unload is not a problem at all, wan’t me to point out the loss?
Before (unload):
Base regen: 0.75/second
Average opportunist regen: (5(ricochets per unload average) plus 8 hits over)x4 = 52 crits in 7 seconds. 7.42 crits per second. 1-(1-0.3)^7.42 = 93% chance to get 1 initiative EVERY second.
Total regen: 0.75 plus 0.93*1= 1.68 initiative/second (average).
After (unload):
Base regen: 1/second
Opportunist: 0.2/second
Total regen: 1.2/second.
Summary: 30% nerf to P/P, the weakest thief spec.
(edited by Ichishi.9613)
Thief: Critical Strikes 15: Opportunist
After doing some testing I noticed that this change does not take in account the volume of hits. The larges volume of hits is on P/P Unload thief with ricochet.
Granted those ones have 15 initiative, spend 5 initiative per unload, unload has 50% critical strike chance, makes 8 shots in 1.75 seconds, with ricochet – 15 hits over 1.75 seconds. That equals to 7 crits over 1.75 seconds which is 4 crits per second. At 30% opportunist chance, its 75% chance to get 1 initiative/second on the WEAKEST weapon set.
75% for 1 initiative every second vs almost 100% chance of getting 0.2 initiative per second. 0.75-0.2 = 0.55 initiative loss per second. The change to initiative returns only 0.25 of that. So the P/P, weakest thief weapon set gets nerfed by this change by far more than any other thief build out there.
Summary:
Previously: 1.5 initiative/second while unloading with 50% crit chance and ricochet trait into a group. After 4 ricochets you have 5-6 (up to 9 with incredible luck)/15 initiative left
Now: 1.2 initiative/second while unloading with 50% crit chance and ricochet trait into a group. After 4 ricochets you have no more than 3/15 initiative left.
Now please take in account that full berzerker thief will have no less then 77% total crit chance without fury on unload and over 100% with fury and food/spotter. That would increase the initiative per second pre-nerf to 1.7 (on pack) and a whooping 1.55 single (or without ricochet).
Could you please ensure that this change (clearly intended to balance out other rather powerful builds) would not hit the weakest weapon set the most? Even as weak as it (P/P) is now I still grown to love it after Body Shot change. So please, even if we are minority, consider the impact of this on all thieves.
Perhaps we could get a range increase/obstacle ignore on infiltrator’s strike now?
That is a ridiculous hit to the reason to take a sword without a single recompense.
How many there are stuns that need more than 1/2 sec to be inflicted? How many more attacks will a thief take in 1/2 more seconds?
It does not seem that much in 1v1… But in WvWvW if you are not away instantly you will be CC’ed to death the very moment after you use stun break.
I would love to have an answer on how should thief handle those situations if previously he went for the sword for a sole reason to be able to escape those situations.
I am sorry I wrote so much in the post above, and sorry for posting again separately – I just thought that the idea I wanted to deliver is not very clear after I read what I wrote.
I meant to say, (I believe) we all want to choose THE MOST BENEFITING TRAIT out of the given options, and not THE LEAST USELESS TRAIT out of the given options (which happens quite a lot atm).
With whatever we play, however far we go, just let us become stronger with every step we take, not with just what we reach at the end.
First of all,
I welcome each and everyone of thief’s initiative changes, but cannot agree to at least the pve aspect of what would be now named infiltrator’s return.
Additionally for thief, condition removal should be introduced to other traits/skills and toned down on that “remove conditions while in stealth”.
Its just that all the variety of thief builds instead of balanced risk/reward idea go for gain/penalty relation.
Ranged thieves for example sacrifice a lot of damage (balanced risk/reward) but are still forced into taking the defensive traits/lines that they don’t need.
It would be nice if traits could be separated in several groups (the narrow-specializations ones (flat boosts), additional options (X if you do Y), skill/combat altering(Y instead of X)) and spread out across the trees more evenly. So that for ANY given set there would be a number of options to choose from towards any style of play rather than promoting a specific one together with a set amount of traits.
One of the changes I would additionally want to have is to remodel one or more traits into this “weapon set altering” thing. Like for example remove/reduce bleed on pistol 1 and boost its damage/speed, remove bounces on shortbow 1 and boost damage/add condtion, etc. That is of course if the promised “new weapon sets for all professions” does not make it in anytime soon.
And one note about engineers – again, I welcome all changes but none of them cardinally improve the engineer’s position in group. The buffed turret traits are nice, but without fixes to turrets themselves (ridiculous hitbox, no scaling with anything AT ALL) those are pointless.
Additionally – while warrior has pretty straightforward and synergized, flexible trait tree, thief has a very decent one with few questionable selections – engineer’s ones looks just plain chaotic with things that (at least by the way they work) would work together as a specialized build being spread across every trait line.
For example I would be very fond of some work using which I could say that in every trait line at least one trait is available in every tier that directly synergizes with either of: at least ONE of the line’s bonus stats OR traits/minors of other tiers.
Its just I favor engineer so much, but unable to create a build looking at which I could say – I know what this build does and I know it does it well. For example, the last one I made – the ones that keeps crazy amount of might on whole group while proving a lot of control and “OWSHI…” options – technically it needs only ONE trait. And makes good use of ONE more. Everything else must be taken as totally useless or minor utility at best. And those that may be useful are out of reach.
screen shake is also awesome.
But what I love the most is the accidental click with ground target spell on live story/personal story/target head that cover half of a screen.